Ridley's
Believe It Or Not—June 4, 2014: Better day
for holidays as who could ever forget the iconic image of the student (whose
name and fate have disappeared) standing straight and tall preventing a line
of Chinese tanks from moving into Tiananmen Square in 1989. No wonder the
Chinese block access to all internet references of the event leading up to
today. Hope you enjoy them along with some orange juice with or without Champagne
and the factoids and quote.
1. International Day of Innocent Children Victims
of Aggression—another one sided UN created holiday created on this day
in 1992 focusing on the loss of children in Palestine and Lebanon from Israeli acts
but ignoring the thousands upon thousands of children killed by other governments
or fanatic sects.
2. Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day—honoring
the hundreds of students and demonstrators seeking democracy and protesting
corruption who were slaughtered in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese Army on this
day in 1989 and due to Chinese censorship of the internet difficult to find out
anything in China about it. How to observe it here in the U.S.? Buy nothing made in China today.
3. International
Firefighters Day—honoring the dedication and sacrifice of firefighters,
observed on the feast day for St. Florian, the patron saint of firefighters.
4. World Laughter Day---first celebrated in
1998 in Mumbai, India and today in over 80 countries to recognize and promote
the healthy effects of laughter—hard to harbor anger and revengeful thoughts
when you are laughing so hard you cannot point a gun.
5.
National Orange Juice Day—fresh squeezed
or concentrate always a good way to start the day and if there is global
warming less chance of those dreaded Florida freezes that damage the crop and
increase the prices.
On this
day in:
a. 1876 An express train called the Transcontinental
Express arrived in San Francisco via the First Transcontinental Railroad only
83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York (in an example of progress at a
snail’s pace, that same trip on Amtrak would take 78 hours, including a 7 hour
layover in Chicago waiting for a change of trains).
b. 1912 Massachusetts became the first state to set a minimum wage which was noncompulsory
and had lower rates for learners and slower workers (could not find the amount
but Oregon 2 years later set it at $8.35 a week ($197.96 in 2014 dollars).
c. 1939 in a dark day for the
concept of give us your huddled masses desiring to be free, the S.S. St.
Louis carrying over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany was turned
away and sent back to Europe condemning over 300 to death in Nazi concentration
camps. Shame on us.
Sometimes when it comes to ideas like the minimum wage,
words spoken almost 150 years ago ring very true today. “Whenever wages are less than the cost of living and the
reasonable provision for maintaining the worker in health, the industry
employing her is in receipt of the working energy of a human being at less than
its cost, and to that extent is parasitic.” 1912 Report of the
Commission on Minimum Wages Boards Massachusetts increased its minimum wage to
$10.50 in April providing another example of why the federal government needs
to get out of this business and let the states decide.
Please
enjoy the 140 character poems on events of interest on my twitter account below
(if you like them, retweet and join almost 140 growing followers
and please follow me) and follow my blogs. Always good, incisive and
entertaining poems on my blogs--click on links below. www.alaskanpoet.blogspot.com
for poems to inspire, touch, emote, elate and enjoy. Go to Rhymes On The Newsworthy
Times for comments on important and breaking news events that should be of
interest.
© June 4,
2014 Michael P. Ridley aka the Alaskanpoet
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